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A Fresh Start:
Balancing Life and TOEFL
Video #2: the current month's layout
In the video below, I will show you how to transfer the template into your bullet journal for the current month.
After you have the calendar in your hands, you should pencil in important dates and goals. Below are some examples.
Important Dates
- birthdays
- holidays
- trips / vacations
- events related to studying for TOEFL iBT — for example:
- upcoming TOEFL iBT tests
- live online Zoom classes with me that you need to prepare for:
- January 10 is the first of 6 Mondays for my Writing classes
- January 12 is the first of 8 Wednesdays for my Speaking classes
- private lessons you have scheduled
- whatever date(s) you and I agreed you would submit activities to me for feedback, etc. etc
Examples of Goals
In my video above, I mentioned the importance of choosing reasonable, quantifiable smaller steps that move you towards the big vision and goals that you wrote about during the set up.
Compare these examples…
- Vague, not-so-helpful goal: Improve my TOEFL Reading score
- Specific, actionable goal:
- Submit TOEFL Reading results to Jaime 2 x per week
- Memorize vocabulary from tough passages 5 days per week
And for Speaking, compare these examples:
- Vague, not-so-helpful goal: Get 26 on TOEFL Speaking
- Specific, actionable goal:
- Improve my accuracy and speed conjugating verb tenses
- Improve my accuracy and speed transforming the prompt on the computer screen into an introduction sentence
Of course, you must write goals that are appropriate for your current focus and level — but hopefully my 2 examples above make this clear: Your goals on the monthly page should be smaller, specific, more manageable action steps that you can actually do, day-by-day.